News Archive June 2010

Lehigh Valley Gets The KISS-off
From: TheMorningCall.com
Posted: June 4, 2010

A year ago, KISS announced with great fanfare that it was using an online voting system to give the world "the first-ever fan-routed tour."

When the tour's first 40 dates were announced in August, there were few of the high-voting but smaller population cities among them: Uncasville, Conn., which has only 12,000 people but also the Mohegan Sun casino, and Greenville, S.C., with a population of 56,000. But the band promised more dates later.

Well, the next leg of the tour has been announced, and it looks like the online voting was as fake as the blood Gene Simmons spits allover stage.

The 28 new dates (bringing to 60 the number the band will have played on this tour) skips Reading, which finished at No. 56 in the voting, which ended July 1. It also skips Williamsport, which finished at No. 52.

The Allentown metropolitan area never really had a chance anyway, having finished at No. 109.

But the new list somehow includes an Aug. 15 date at Toyota Pavilion at Montage in Scranton (Wilkes-Barre finished at No. 154), a second date in the 33rd-place finishing Philadelphia area (Aug. 6 at Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, N.J., after playing in Philly's Wachovia Center in October) and a July 31 date at HersheyPark Stadium in Hershey - Hershey finished, oh, I don't know, 1 millionth on the list.

The list also includes an Aug. 20 date at PNC Bank Center in Holmdel, N.J.

A fan club ticket presale for some stops, including the PNC Bank Center date, starts today. For details, go to www.kissonline.com.

As with the first round of dates, the new list includes few of the small cities that were at the top of the voting list.

There is a token bow to the online vote list - a show Sept. 12 in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, which was near the top of the list. (Canadian towns topped off the votes, but, uh, yeah, none of them are on the list either.

Before the voting for the KISS ALIVE 35 North American tour started (it now has transformed into The Hottest band Alive Tour), the band qualified its system by saying, "in order to keep the competition fair for smaller cities, final site selection will weigh population size versus total votes."

In case you want to voice your displeasure with the voting system, KISS&39;s Facebook page is at www.facebook.com/KISS.